Mobile phone service providers in the country yesterday increased the prices of various services, in line with the price hike proposed in the budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year.
This has caused prices of all their packages to go up. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) issued an SRO on Thursday, making effective the 5 per cent supplementary duty (SD) hike in the proposed budget for 2019-20 fiscal year, which was placed in parliament Thursday by Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.
The SD has been increased to 10 per cent from the existing 5 per cent in the budget. Following the issue of the SRO, all mobile phone service providers implemented the price hike. With the updated service rates, if a customer purchases Tk 100 worth of telecom services (in the forms of voice, data, SMS or value-added services), Tk 27.50 will be deducted and submitted to the government exchequer. Earlier, the government received around Tk 22 against Tk 100 worth of services.
When asked about the changes, Robi Axiata Ltd Chief Corporate and Regulatory Officer Shahed Alam said, “The National Board of Revenue issued an SRO over implementing the new supplementary duty (SD) on Thursday and the notice has been made available on the NBR website. According to the law, whenever an SRO is issued, we are bound to implement the SRO immediately.”